Talk:Relevant Numbers
Problems with some names in the list. Some names shouldn't be on this list because they don't belong here but I though it best to discuss it here first. -- Daniel Aquino - Was never a relevant number, only ordered dead by control to keep the Machine location a secret. The Machine in the episode was only reviewing footage. -- James Mercer - Was never a relevant number, it was a setup far a trap to kill Shaw and Cole. -- Owen Matthews - Is an irrelevant number, the number was sent to Reese, I believe as part of the contingency program. The ISA operative in the plane was sent only to assassinate Owen. The Plane itself only became a relevant number mid flight after the assassins failed to kill Owen quietly. -- Peter Collier - The date the number was received is unknown. I corrected this but it was undone the explanation "Control has Collier's file on her desk when Garrison comes to her after the press conference.". But that doesn't mean anything, and besides, Control stated previously that they were already aware of Vigilance. Information inside the file from the episode is readable and contains information at least as far back as 2013. Bootkiller (talk) 13:31, June 8, 2014 (UTC) :Owen Matthews is a relevant number because an ISA hitman was sent to kill him (Hersh explains why). Reese only received the number because the Machine needed a purpose for him to return to the team, and because of the Colombian drug lord who wanted to blow up the plane. Owen was a relevant number before it became clear that his assassination would eventually lead to a mass casualty event. :Assuming Control had received Colliers' number in 2013 (earlier than that is unlikely as stated in the report), why would she wait and not send a team to eliminate him, especially when there's a note on the folder "Immediate Action Required"? :As for the other two names, we also never saw the Machine actually send out a relevant number (except Kurzweil's). The dialogues in suggest that the Machine got fooled by fake bank transfers and other actions Control & her team took to frame Aquino and Mercer so that Shaw's team would assassinate them. :That being said I'll leave it to other editors to comment. Where would you suggest we put Aquino and Mercer, if not here? ~~ Helloclaire (talk) 13:47, June 8, 2014 (UTC) ::Just because Control sent an ISA operative to kill someone, it doesn't mean they received a number (as we seen with Shaw when she was sent to kill Aquino). Finch even explains it to Reese, "I built the Machine to detect acts of terror not national embarrassment". Additionally, the order to blow up the plane was only a fail safe measure. The real threat to the plane, and as a result of it became a relevant number, was when the Machine put Reese on it, he was the one who prevented three assassins from kill Owen. ::Pressure from Ross Garrison, they discussed it in the episode, Control said something like "you should have let me take care of this when we had the change" or something like that. Maybe I'm wrong, I'll rewatch it later. ::The Machine never sent Aquino's number, Control faked the banks transfers and the intelligence. Mercer is probably an operative posing as the target, the intelligence was also fake. They shouldn't be on these lists because they don't belong in any of them. Bootkiller (talk) 14:28, June 8, 2014 (UTC) :::I just rewatched "4C" in its entirety, and I generally agree with Bootkiller's reasoning on Owen Matthews. I think it's unclear whether the Machine sent Owen's number to the ISA. The ISA considered him a "national security risk," according to Hersh, because they didn't want him to reveal their secret scheme to skim profits from online drug trades. After learning about this, Finch said, "I didn't program the machine to detect national embarrassments, Mr. Reese. I designed it to prevent a national tragedy." In light of that, I believe that the ISA decided to eliminate Owen for their own reasons, without any guidance from the Machine. In this case, the only impending national tragedy would be a plane crash at the hands of the drug cartel hitmen, but that would not have happened if anyone succeeded in killing Owen. Reese was the only person stopping multiple hitmen from accomplishing that task. :::The only thing that makes me doubt that reasoning is that a variety of conversations throughout the episode seem to imply that Owen IS a relevant number. When Finch is searching for more information about Owen, he tells Shaw "I fear...he may be relevant." After all, if Owen was irrelevant, wouldn't Finch have received his number? Then, after Finch explains that the machine is not designed to detect embarrassments, Reese says "so, you're saying they (the ISA) missed something." That seems to imply that Reese considered Owen to be a relevant number, and he assumed that the ISA simply missed the potential for a mass casualty event. Finch's initial suspicion about Owen's relevance could simply be an initial hunch that didn't prove to be correct. And Reese's statement could be interpreted as a question from someone who isn't seeing the whole picture. So these details are not enough to establish that Owen was a relevant number, but I believe they leave room for that possibility. :::Overall, I think the balance of evidence supports Bootkiller's claim. Owen was not a relevant number. He was a target of opportunity, similar to Henry Peck. The ISA wanted to eliminate him before he could reveal their dirty secrets. The Machine detected multiple threats to Owen's life, so it positioned Reese to intervene. That intervention heightened the risk for a mass casualty event, but we don't have any evidence that the Machine generated additional relevant numbers after positioning Reese on the plane. :::Finally, I strongly agree that Aquino and Mercer were NOT relevant numbers. I find it very implausible that the fake bank transfers fooled the Machine. One of the ongoing themes of the show is that the Machine is "never wrong." The only way to "fool" the Machine, as Root demonstrated, is to create a REAL threat. Michael Cole discovered that the foreign bank transfers to Aquino were fake, and he was able to trace them to the US government. If Cole could uncover that information, the all-seeing Machine must have detected it too. Aquino and Mercer were simply targets of opportunity. SmokyBirch (talk) 06:43, June 21, 2014 (UTC) :::: On the contrary, Owen Matthews was quite clearly both a relevant and an irrelevant number. The whole point of the episode was that the POI story was playing with that possibility, along with the possibility that the Machine could be wrong despite Finch's belief to the contrary. As Helloclaire notes above, Hersh made it clear in his conversation with Shaw that Matthews was a relevant number. The weight of discussion throughout the episode backs that up, and raises a key issue -- is the ISA using the Machine's data for other than what Finch originally intended? We can't be sure, but it does raise some new, open questions. :::: The argument could also be made that the same is true with Collier. We don't know why Control had that immediate action file, but she was clearly hiding it, and whatever activity grew out of it, from Garrison -- why else shred it? Was she in league with Decima? We can't be sure, but she produced some mighty fine drama at the trial, and I think it's the most reasonable explanation for a few things. But there's a big plot point there, that the ending, and her rather unconcerned receipt of Hersh's autopsy file, makes more intriguing. :::: As for what to do about Aquino and Mercer, putting them in this article, possibly under a modified heading relating to ISA action seems the most reasonable action. This is a fan wiki, not the stupid Wikipedia with all its pretense at being an encyclopedia. Find a place that makes sense, label them appropriately and have done with it. --LeverageGuru (talk) 18:57, June 21, 2014 (UTC) ::::: I agree with you that the discussions throughout the episode assume that Owen Matthews was a relevant number. However, I disagree that "Hersh made it clear...that Matthews was a relevant number." Hersh explained why the ISA considered Matthews to be relevant, but that is a VERY different thing from the Machine considering Matthews to be relevant. The ISA has attempted to kill several people who were not relevant numbers from the Machine: Peck, Aquino, Szilard, Casey, Root, Shaw, Cole, etc. In each case, the ISA believed that their target was "relevant to national security," but they were not relevant numbers produced by the Machine. ::::: The only thing Hersh said that could be interpreted as an admission that the ISA received Matthews' number is: "We were on the Sphinx a year ago." Did the Machine give Matthews' number a year ago, but instead of killing him, the ISA decided to skim money from the online drug market he was building? That's possible, but speculative. ::::: It's unclear why Finch suspected that Owen Matthews was a relevant number. Perhaps he was too focused on the two categories he originally gave the Machine? Since he didn't receive Matthews' number, he assumed that Matthews must not be irrelevant? Maybe he had other information that he never divulged? I don't know. I'm waffling on this because I think the conversations clearly assume that Matthews was relevant, but the situational evidence suggests that he was simply one of the ISA's "targets of opportunity."SmokyBirch (talk) 20:10, June 21, 2014 (UTC) :::::: Owen Matthews wasn't a number in the traditional sense, but he was still a "Person of Interest". Neither Finch nor Reese received his number, instead the Machine put Reese on that plane and even sent him Owen's seat number. No Dewey necessary. This was the Machine acting after the ISA decided that Owen had to go which suggests that the Machine knew the ISA were involved before it contacted Reese. :::::: SmokyBirch wrote: "The ISA has attempted to kill several people who were not relevant numbers from the Machine: Peck, Aquino, Szilard, Casey, Root, Shaw, Cole, etc. In each case, the ISA believed that their target was "relevant to national security," but they were not relevant numbers produced by the Machine." - Those are all "Targets of Opportunity" as you said it yourself. Why would the ISA believe they were relevant to national security if they already knew why those people had to go? The only threat from those people was that they could expose the Machine, nothing more. Except for Aquino (and Peck if you count the drugs) none of them was framed in any way. They were attacked directly. :::::: The ISA have proven to be quite resourceful when it comes to getting rid of people who might cause them problems but that doesn't mean they don't know how to fool the Machine. They needed to eliminate Aquino for coming too close so they framed him to be working with Hezbollah... if that is not a reason for the Machine to detect a threat to national security, especially coming from a man who's working for the government... what is it then? After all, by your own definition (and Finch's) the Machine's job is to detect threats to national security, regardless where they come from and we have seen more than once that the Machine can be fooled (Root!) or act on its own (Owen, McCourt). And why would the ISA need to go through all the trouble to create fake bank transfers for Aquino (and Mercer) if the only goal was to kill them? They could have just given the order just as they did with Cole and Shaw. Shaw said it herself that they don't ask questions but only execute orders. And they did refer to Mercer as their "new number". If we really want to be nitpicking then that's our cue. :::::: Perhaps we shouldn't refer to those (relevant) people as "numbers" anymore but merely as "Persons of Interest" - because that's what they are; in the very definition of the term. ~~ Helloclaire (talk) 07:50, June 22, 2014 (UTC) Are we overthinking this? Claire's solution seems reasonable. Didn't we do it that way originally, then make the change at someone's behest? I can't exactly recall. --LeverageGuru (talk) 10:59, June 22, 2014 (UTC) :I largely agree with Helloclaire's assessment of Owen Matthews. Just a couple clarifications: Helloclaire wrote: "Why would the ISA believe they were relevant to national security if they already knew why those people had to go?" I'm using the phrase "relevant to national security" to mean any generic national security risk. The people involved with Northern Lights believe the Machine is extremely important for national security. Special Counsel and Control both voiced concerns about the country being defenseless without it. So if a person poses any threat of revealing the Machine to the public, that person is automatically a national security threat, in their eyes. That's all I meant by that phrase. :Regarding the machine's ability to be fooled: As I see it, Root did not fool the Machine at all. That's why I placed "fool" in quotation marks in my previous reply. Root used the Machine to gain access to Finch and Reese. But she couldn't fool the machine into perceiving a fictitious threat. She hired HR to place a hit on herself -- a very real threat. I agree that it seems odd for the ISA to go to the trouble of framing Mercer and Aquino. Both Shaw and Hersh are willing to carry out orders without asking any questions. But I don't believe the Machine was fooled by fake bank transfers that Cole was able to uncover. Maybe they knew that Cole was inquisitive and tried to cover their tracks to avoid detection? :Now that I think of it, the Shaw/Cole team seems unique in everything we've seen from the ISA. Usually, we see hit teams or individual operatives whose only purpose is to kill (consider the three man team sent to kill Peck, the various assassination missions assigned to Hersh, and the operative sent to kill Owen Matthews). On the other hand, Shaw and Cole appeared to be a dual-purpose intelligence-gathering and attack team. Their division of duties mirrored Reese and Finch: Shaw did most of the active field work, following targets and killing them. Cole gathered information about the targets and briefed Shaw on their activities. In light of their dual-purpose role, maybe the ISA felt the need to create a fictitious paper trail for Cole? :The fact that Shaw and Cole referred to Mercer as their "new number" doesn't necessarily indicate that the number came from the Machine. As far as we know, the Machine does not contact ISA operatives directly. It contacts someone associated with Control (remember the scene near the end of "God Mode," when Hersh tells Control that Research made contact, and Control instructs him to get a team ready). So Control could have easily given Shaw and Cole a number that did not come from the Machine. :In any event, I think using the general category of Persons of Interest might be a good solution. I also like LeverageGuru's suggestion to create a separate category for ISA targets of opportunity. SmokyBirch (talk) 19:46, June 22, 2014 (UTC)